Paperbacks: fiction and non-fiction

As Stubbs points out in this biography, the work for which John Donne is best known (his love poetry) was the very thing he sought to keep most hidden. Embarking on a career in the church, Donne might have been uneasy about his youthful reputation (he was "a great visitor of ladies"), but Stubbs also shows that his poetry and his Catholic upbringing were at odds with his desire to progress socially and professionally at the courts of Elizabeth I and James I. The author positions his subject brilliantly in the great social and religious upheavals of the time, while achieving a remarkable empathy with Donne the private man.

(Penguin £9.99). IC

THE JANISSARY TREE by Jason Goodwin

Crime fiction gets ever more exotic, as Goodwin's gripping murder mystery confirms - set in Istanbul in 1836 when the Ottoman Empire is in full flourish